MS - ZIS Middle School Library Resources: MS - OER - Open Educational Resources

Finding OER - Places to Start

There are a multitude of OER available online to choose from, including full textbooks and courses, lessons and units, multimedia resources, and data. These can be found through a search of  popular search engines like Google, though it is easier to search and discover them through dedicated OER repositories or libraries. Below is a sampling of such repositories and libraries.

Aggregated OER Collections

• Hippo Campus - Multimedia content on general education subjects for middle-school and high-school teachers and their students.
• Khan Academy - Short lessons in the form of YouTube videos and practice exercises.      
• OER Commons - A public library of OER with tools for content authoring & remixing. Also provides  collaborative workspaces for creating, curating, and discussing OER.

Open Media Collections

• Creative Commons Image Search - Openly licensed still images, music, and videos across several repositories, including YouTube, Google, SoundCloud, and more.
• Getty Institute Open Images - Searchable database of Creative Commons licensed images.
• Library of Congress -  Millions of books, recordings, photographs, newspapers, maps and manuscripts, all in the public domain (and thus OER).

Open Data Collections

• Data.gov - Comprises U.S. federal data with links to U.S. states, cities and counties with web sites that provide open data. Note that non-federal data available through Data.gov may have different licensing than open licensing.           
• World Bank Open Data - Global development data that is free and openly licensed.         

• PLOS - Science and medicine research articles with images, figures, tables and graphs, all licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license that allows for adaptations and derivatives.
  
   

Open Textbooks                                                                      

• CK-12 - Standards-aligned open textbooks in the STEM subject for K-12 students.                                
• OpenStax Textbooks - AP-level open textbooks spanning multiple subjects that are developed and peer-reviewed by educators.

Open Lessons and Units

• EngageNY-  Common Core-aligned curriculum and instructional resources, bilingual resources, performance tasks and assessment guidelines.
• Expeditionary Learning - Curriculum and curriculum maps spanning Language Arts, Life Science and Social Studies.
• Illustrative Mathematics - Comprehensive math curriculum, including student tasks, lesson plans  and a format for engaging mathematical discussion.
• C3 Teachers - Lessons with embedded primary sources, based on the Inquiry Arc of the College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for State Social Studies Standards, and licensed under Creative Commons.